Art Dubai To Launch Marker, A New Component Of The Fair Showcasing Experimental Art Spaces From The Middle East And Asia

This March, Art Dubai will launch MARKER, a new platform for experimental art spaces from the Middle East and Asia to showcase projects by emerging artists at the fair in 2011. The section is curated by Nav Haq. A connoisseur in curational practices, Nav Haq has been at the heart of the Middle Eastern art market having honed his expertise in such institutions as the Platform Garanti, Istanbul and the Townhouse Gallery, Cairo in addition to being a regular contributor to the renowned international art journals, Yishu and Bidoun.

MARKER will include five ‘concept stands’ that each respond to the phenomenon of the art fair as a mirror of contemporary society, and will reflect on the realms of commerce, entertainment, education and aesthetics.

The five art spaces taking part in MARKER are: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (Alexandria, Egypt), Makan (Amman, Jordan), GREY NOISE (Lahore, Pakistan), Liu Ding’s Store (Beijing, China), and Ruangrupa (Jakarta, Indonesia). Each organisation will present new projects that have been conceived specifically for Art Dubai.

“Through MARKER, Art Dubai aims to champion innovative arts spaces and provide exposure and opportunities for the next generation of artists from the MENASA region,” stated Art Dubai Fair Director Antonia Carver. “This platform links the dynamic artists projects commissioned by Art Dubai with the gallery halls, and is another point at which international curators and collectors meet the arts scenes of the Middle East and Asia.”

“The art fair is an example of an experience economy par excellence, embodying the realms of escapism, entertainment, education and aesthetics,” says Nav Haq. “It will be negotiated as a particular kind of convergence – an abounding space of exchange for people, brands, art, money and ideas.”

Punctuating the gallery halls, these five spaces are literally ‘marked out’ from the other commercial spaces, presenting specific projects that reflect upon the fair. The projects are as follows:

• Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum will present the second installment of its long-term text project The ARPANET Dialogues, an archive of rare conversations within the contemporary social, political and cultural milieu. Excerpted from a series of dialogues that began in 1975 and took place over the U.S. Department of Defense’s experimental instant messaging application ARPANET, the project presented at Art Dubai will feature a 1976 conversation between economist Samir Amin, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, political economy Ph.D. candidate Francis Fukuyama and architect Minoru Yamasaki.
• Makan’s project reflects the community-oriented nature of the teams collaborative projects and residency program. They have opened a pop-up bar, to serve a range of complimentary drinks at a fixed time each day, and will use these opportunities to lead impromptu themed discussions with attendees.
• GREY NOISE will present two separate but related projects by Lahore-based artists Saira Ansari and Mehreen Murtaza that reflect on consumer culture. Ansari’s piece, The Complete ‘Pakistani Art’ Dinner Set, depicts clichés taken from Pakistani art such as men on horseback, geometric patterns and guns, using silhouettes in the style of traditional 18th century portraits. Murtaza’s work, Tastes Like Futurism, consists of a series of photographic images that depict the role of food in a future civilization where, over time, humans have begun engineering culture using patterns of consumption as a basis for creating social concepts.
• A roving platform that reflects on the notion of value and the complex politics of valuation in the art market (Liu Ding’s Store) will consist of two components at Art Dubai. In Home and Make Real the Priceless in Your Heart, the artist will sell a series of deliberately unfinished landscape paintings. Made in a factory according to the artist’s specifications and signed by Liu Ding, customers will be offered the opportunity to finish the painting themselves. Conversations is a section of the store that will organise private dialogues led by the artist with other artistic and cultural practitioners. In collaboration with curator Carol Yinghua Lu, each day of the fair will include a schedule of conversations with collectors, critics, curators and dealers, who in return for their participation will receive one of Ding’s paintings.
• Ruangrupa’s Mini OK-Video Festival will present highlights from this biennial event that they launched in 2003, featuring, which has become an important event in the South East Asian art scene. The video works presented will be selected from across the festival’s various incarnations, and will present work from Indonesia and beyond.
 

UAE Online Art Archive Is Launched Alongside A Nation Wide Competition Showcasing The UAE’s Talent

The art community of the UAE is in for a lavish helping of the Emirates’ most comprehensive online database as the Office for the UAE Pavilion at the Venice Biennale launches the UAE Art Archive, www.uaeartarchive.org. The UAE Art Archive has been developed specifically to offer a platform for people interested in the art scene across the UAE to have a better understanding of art and the cultural infrastructure of the country and to showcase artists’ work.

Its launch is complemented by an image design contest that will enable anyone who is resident in the UAE to submit their design for the homepage banner of the art archive, which can be found at www.uaeartarchive.org. Supported by Emirates Airline, who is providing two economy class tickets to Venice, the competition encourages everyone with artistic flair to submit their work.

Commenting on the announcement, Dr. Lamees Hamdan, Commissioner of the UAE Pavilion, said:
“The UAE Art Archive provides a unique platform, for the first time, in the contemporary art community where we can all come together and share this vehicle across all seven Emirates. This is a collective space for artists practicing in the UAE to show their work, whereby profiles can be uploaded with a biography, reference to online websites and gallery affiliation can be made and exhibition histories and artwork can be created. The archive is published online and is open to everyone all over the world.

This is also an opportunity for UAE residents to participate in an exclusive competition and to be a part of an online community that is really working from a grass roots level for the art and cultural scene across the UAE. This competition, I believe, is one of the most effective paths in which we can engage people’s interests and encourage them to support our own pool of creative contemporary talent.”

Ahmed Khoory, Senior Vice President for Commercial Operations – Gulf, Middle East and Iran, Emirates Airline said:
"Emirates is delighted to be a part of this exciting initiative. I hope that the people of the UAE can take inspiration from the majestic beauty of this great country when developing their submissions. The UAE Pavilion has worked hard to encourage UAE residents to embrace and express their creativity and we look forward to continuing our partnership with them for many years to come."

Commencing from July 23nd, the competition will be judged by the Ambassadors to the UAE Pavilion: Sultan Al Qassemi, Alanood Al Warshaw, Jack Persekian, Paula Askari, Hannan Sayed, Nadine Kanso, Rashid Shabib, Ahmed Shabib, Sunny Rahbar and Maliha Tabari. The contest will close on September 2nd and an announcement of the winner will be made on September 16th at a Suhoor during Ramadan to reveal who will be awarded two economy flight tickets to Venice with a three-day stay at a four-star hotel in Venice and two tickets to visit the 53rd Venice Biennale, courtesy of Emirates Airline.

“As an Ambassador to the UAE Pavilion and one of the judges of this competition, I am enthusiastic to see the first glimpse of how the UAE’s art scene has evolved and what our local creative minds have in store. This contest is an innovative way to examine the developments which are currently taking place across the UAE’s art agenda,” Sultan Al Qassemi commented.

The announcement comes in the midst of an ongoing international art exhibition in Venice, Italy, the 2009 Venice Biennale, of which the UAE has sent its official contribution to play an integral part. Breaking ground as the first Arabian Gulf state ever to participate since the event began in 1895, the UAE Pavilion was established in recognition of the nation’s emergence as a cultural hub worthy of attracting global attention and was supported by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Community Development.

Universally recognised as the world’s most prestigious contemporary art event, the Venice Biennale currently presents its 53rd International Art Exhibition, which began on June 7 and will be staged through November 22, 2009.

Dubai Customs Takes Part In The 21st Pedigree And Whiskas Pets Show

The Detector Dogs Unit (DDCU) at Dubai Customs participated in the 21st Pedigree and Whiskas Pets Show held at the “Festival City” area in Dubai on 21st February 2009 being the first time in which a government organization in the UAE takes part in this annual charitable show.

DDCU took part with two showcasing, which aroused the attention and satisfaction of the public.

In the first show, customs inspectors sought the assistance of DDCU to examine a vehicle suspected to be loaded with explosives at one of customs land borders operating in Dubai. DDCU immediately responded to the request and a trained customs dog detected the explosives inside the suspected vehicle.

Customs inspectors, in the second show, examined a passenger’s baggage suspected of smuggling drugs. Customs inspectors failed in their first inspection attempt to detect the drugs, which were carefully hidden inside the baggage. They immediately called for DDCU to assist with examining the baggage. The call was immediately responded by DDCU and a drug detector dog examined the baggage and could identify the bag containing the illegal drugs.

Mr. Mohammed Al Mari, Executive Director of Cargo Operations at Dubai customs said that, “our participation in this show aims at highlighting DDCU key role in assisting inspection officers at different customs borders with maintaining Dubai’s security and safeguarding its borders being the reason for establishing the DDCU, which proved to be efficient over the past period since its inception.”

Worth mentioning, the DDCU was established in 2007 to assist customs officers with examining drugs and explosives in a manner protecting the society from any harms and maintaining safety and security of the citizen and the country. Cooperation was made with Dubai Police in connection with training the respective staff and qualifying customs dogs to operate in the area of security searching. The DDCU operates with six dogs, two of them are explosives dogs and the other four are drug detector dogs.